What a girl wants

by Out of Options

Lizzie Stark has loved Tommy Shelby since she was a child but no matter how much she gives him it never seems to be quite enough. It may develop into more but for now this is just going to be some short snapshots of Lizzie Stark's life in the Birmingham underworld. Rated T because it involves the Shelbys. I wish I could say that the Peaky Blinders were mine but sadly they aren't.

1. Chapter 1

Rated M because it involves the Shelbys!

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Small Heath, 1907 - 1908

Lizzie Starke was 13 when she first realised that she was in love with Tommy Shelby. Tommy was a few years older than her and had started to run about with his elder brother Arthur doing jobs for the Birmingham Boys. Arthur Shelby was already dangerous. He was reputed to have taken down a brewer's dray with a single punch and Lizzie felt a little shiver of fear run down her spine whenever he looked in her direction. Tommy was different. He wasn't dangerous, not really, not yet. He was a bit of a dreamer really, a deep thinker. He loved to take her to lie down in the long grass by the rec and tell her his plans for the future. One day he would join the army, another day he would seek his fortune in Australia or America. Whatever he did Lizzie knew it would be big and exciting and she hoped she would be with him when it happened.

She lost her virginity to him under a bridge down by the cut when she was 14. He was more experienced than her but probably not by much. Lizzie wasn't entirely sure what she'd been expecting from sex but she knew that her first time was better than what her parents did since it involved neither fists nor screaming. Instead Tommy had made her tingle all over in a way that she was very keen to repeat. Over the summer she met up with him regularly enjoying the warmth of his body and the look that he got in his eyes when he was inside her. She felt a greater sense of security and well-being in the times that they were together than she'd ever had with her family.

That autumn two big events had taken place in Lizzie's life and neither of them had been good. Firstly, her broken down mother had finally died of the drink - or at least that was the story that was put about - and secondly Lizzie had found out that she was in the family way. Without her mother there to take the blows, her father had dealt with the situation in the only way he knew how – by beating the child out of her. The violence of it had nearly killed her and when she was whole again her father had coldly told her that since she was happy enough to play the whore then she might as well supplement the family's pitiful income by taking money for it. What appeared to upset him most was that he'd lost the opportunity to charge someone extra to take her virginity.

There would be no more pleasant interludes with Tommy Shelby – not unless he paid.